How do small business owners know when it’s time to hire a managed IT solutions provider? Here are 5 indicators

With the steadily growing number of small businesses out there, this is a question I get asked often but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of answers online: If you’re a small business owner and your business is growing, when is it considered a good time to upgrade to a proper managed IT solution?

The answer is that there is no right answer – but I’ll attempt to shed some light on the topic by bringing up a few common scenarios. If your situation matches one of these scenarios, it might be time to consider upgrading to a more professional IT solution.

1. Downtime is happening more frequently

This is probably the number one reason why you might consider partnering with a solutions provider like Perfect Leap Technology Inc – if your staff are complaining non-stop about outages, super slow computers and brokenjpeg systems, then chances are you’ve outgrown your current IT solution.

With so many options available to choose from, the role of a good IT provider nowadays isn’t just providing support for your staff when their computer systems when they break; it’s helping you to monitor, update and pro-actively manage your infrastructure so that outages occur less frequently.

2. You’ve been planning to upgrade but you have no idea where to begin

Did you know that the role of an IT solutions provider is much more than just break-fix? If you’ve already planning to upgrade for awhile and you have no idea how much you should budget or where you should begin, then a company like Perfect Leap™ can help you do just that.

Because we offer several different solutions for different sized businesses, we will help you identify which solution is best – and ideally which one fits within your overall budget. And, if your budget is unrealistic, we’ll tell you that too – and then help you develop a 5-year road map so you can start working your way towards a more productive system.

3. You already have an internal IT department but you’re having trouble sourcing talent

This is something that happens more often than it should… a small, entrenched IT department that is a revolving door of tech staff. We don’t blame you – especially the way things are going now with more and more people heading into the gig economy and quitting their job every 2 years.

What’s more, most businesseses and HR departments don’t seem to know what to look for when hiring for new IT talent. At least, that’s what it would seem to indicate when there’s a thriving recruiting sector in Vancouver.

This is where a company like Perfect Leap™ comes in – we’ll save you the hassle of having to search for the right people because we already have them – we know what skills are needed in today’s tech sector and we’re constantly upgrading to stay on top of the latest trends.

4. You’re looking to streamline your business with more efficiency

As most savvy business owners know, keeping things lean is a good way to ensure you don’t bite off more than you can chew later on down the road. Technical debt is a term that “reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy or limited solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer” (wikipedia).

And based on my experience, technical debt happens more frequently with internal IT departments than it does with outsourced providers like Perfect Leap™. Why? It probably has something to do with the fact that outsourced providers do our best to choose standardized solutions. It also might have to do with the frequency of small internal IT departments being overwhelmed with support requests and choosing ‘band-aid’ solutions to solve problems quickly so they can move on to the next one.

5. You’re concerned about keeping your business secure

This might sound like a no-brainer – who isn’t concerned about data security these days? With more and more companies losing their customers’ data to theft – and not just small organizations, but big, news-breaking ones, almost every business owner is probably wondering in the back of their mind what will happen if their business gets hit with ransomware or suffers from a breach.

Many small businesses have almost zero concept of what it means to properly manage their data – for example, one of the most common mistakes we’ve seen is leaving their laptop hard drives unencrypted. This means that if your laptop gets stolen, guess what? All of the data on it is easily accessible by plugging it into another computer – and that’s especially bad if it belongs to someone with access to sensitive data!

A company like Perfect Leap™ is designed to help you solve all of these problems and more. If you’re a Vancouver-based business and you’ve been on the fence about switching to a managed solution, maybe it’s time to give us a call! You can reach me by emailing joel@perfectleap.com, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out – I’m happy to answer a few of them over a coffee!